


How Faint the Tune

by Constantsnow



Category: Project Blue Book (TV)
Genre: Alien Abduction, Alternate Universe - Aliens, Conspiracy Theories, Gen, Horror, M/M, Marijuana, Non-Consensual Body Modification, Original Character(s), Post-Canon Fix-It, Post-Season/Series 02, Recreational Drug Use
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-27
Updated: 2020-07-27
Packaged: 2021-03-06 02:00:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,284
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25555465
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Constantsnow/pseuds/Constantsnow
Summary: 'How High the Moon' plays on the jukebox, the town of Fargo is outside the diner window, looking like picturesque America.Hynek is sitting across the table from him, eating a slice of cherry pie.Quinn screams, and its starts all over again.
Relationships: J. Allen Hynek/Michael Quinn
Comments: 1
Kudos: 10





	How Faint the Tune

Hynek was sitting across from him in the diner booth, coffee steaming in mugs next to their arms and plates with perfect slices of cherry pie in front of them both. 

Outside the window, the town of Fargo was in the middle of warm autumn afternoon, leaves fluttered down the streets as a woman put carved pumpkins outside the flower shop.

 _‘How High the Moon_ ’ plays on the jukebox.

Quinn’s brow furrowed, something felt off.

He looked back at the doctor, napkins full of mathematical equations and a pen, abandoned at the side of the table. Hynek was eating the pie, a pleased smile on his face as he chewed and looked at Michael.

“This is good pie.” Hynek said, pointing with his fork at the flakey golden crust and deep, deep red filling.

“What?”

“Good pie, really captain, are you alright?” Hynek took another bite.

“ _This is good pie_ ,” Quinn repeated, then shook his head. “I. . . I said that in Fargo, not Allen. This. . . This isn’t real.”

Across the table, Hynek chuckled. “Very good Captain, very good.”

Outside the window, Fargo vanished like a television being switched off. The chatter in the diner stopped similarly, but the song continued, a little louder than before.

“The details of your memories are still perfect, just further proof that you are a perfect candidate.” Hynek said as the diner began to fall away.

Michael shouted out of fear, but the chair beneath him was as solid as ever, as the floor fell away to endless blackness.

“What is this?” Michael realized he was strapped down; his heart began to race as he struggled. “Who are you? Where the hell am I!”

“Now Captain, you can remember the myriad of tastes and textures of cherry pie, you can remember this.” Hynek said.

But it wasn’t Hynek.

It was a very tall, very thin figure, details blurred behind the glare of multi-colored lights.

Quinn screamed.

* * *

The pie was blueberry this time, and Quinn ate it, even knowing it was not real. The napkins that Hynek’s mathematical equations had been written on were replaced by Blue Book casefiles. Specifically, ones in which Michael had had unexplained experiences that coincided with their investigations.

“We have had our eyes on you for years.” Hynek said. Quinn looked up at him, noticed a smear of pie filling at the corner of his mouth.

“Why do you wear his face?” Quinn asked, stabbing at his pie.

Hynek smiled. Its sharp and dangerous, Quinn would’ve never associated it with the real doctor.

“You like this face, quite fascinating really. We monitor your vitals and brain waves, your hormone levels. Before you knew I was not Doctor Josef Allen Hynek, your body reacted quite positively to this visage. We did try others though.”

Hynek’s form morphs, growing taller and bulkier, turning into the intimidating form of General Harding, it’s a quick, smooth transition, and easy. Quinn tenses as the being keeps talking, flawlessly sounding like Harding.

“But it turns out, your superior enacts a more negative response than was beneficial.”  
Harding in his pressed dress blues, shivers and shrinks down into Susie’s beautiful form, teasingly dressed in Quinn’s flight jacket and that seductive black lace lingerie; her full lips are painted bright red and pulled into a smile.

“And this one betrayed and used you, you react quite violently, though you never once raised your hand at me.” Susie said in that sweet tease of hers. “Such a gentleman, after all. Your mind supplies Susie dressed like this, every time, yet,” Susie looks out the diner window, and Quinn turns to look too. It’s a battlefield instead of the quaint Main Street of Fargo. 

“She broke my heart,” Quinn glanced across the table at the blond, who gives a small smile, and a soft look in her eyes. “She makes me feel like I’m fighting a war.” He looks back out the window.

“But not me.” The voice is Hynek, and the man is once again sitting across from him, eyes gleaming behind his glasses. “I am trying to help you Michael.”

“By fucking with my mind?!” Quinn shouted, slamming his fists down on the table. 

One of the coffee mugs tips over, but the liquid doesn’t spill from the cup, it just stays there until Hynek reaches over and rights it. The coffee sloshes, the steam continues to rise, and Michael can smell it in the air.

“The things you have seen, can… **damage** the human mind, Captain.” Hynek says gently.  
Michael briefly remembers the blue lights in the ocean, his head throbs as he strains to see past the lights.

“Captain!” Hynek calls, taking his hand. “You are not ready for that yet.”

The diner has been reset. Their slices of pie are full once more. ‘ _How High the Moon_ ’, has restarted a little louder than before.

“What was that?” Michael asked, blinking through the tears that are streaming down his face. He can’t remember, but he knows it was overwhelming. “ _Fuck_.” He sobs reaching up with the hand that Hynek isn’t holding and swipes shakily at his eyes.

“That was everything you have been searching for. Proof that humanity is not alone in the universe, that your science is truly in it’s infancy and that magic exists.” 

“I… I think I am done for today, doc,” 

“Very well, Captain.” Hynek said softly, distant already as the diner begins to fall away. “We’ll let you rest.”

Quinn’s eyes flutter closed

* * *

Instead of Hynek’s calculations on napkins, or Blue Book casefiles, the table is littered with drawings like the ones the woman, Rachel, had drawn. 

Vague shapes just detailed enough to cause anxiety. 

There are sketched figures Michael would call humanoid, strange cityscapes, flying vehicles and alien animals.

' _How High the Moon’s_ ' guitar solo plays it’s upbeat tune.

Michael has graphite smeared all over his trembling hands, a pencil rolls across the table, away from the picture underneath Michael’s hands.

“What is this?” He looks up at the being wearing Hynek’s face.

“You drew it Captain, you tell me.” Hynek is eating an ice cream sundae instead of pie.

“Am I just locked on a base, high as a kite?” He knows that he isn’t, but Quinn asks anyways. Mary Ford has begun to sing again.

“Absolutely not. Those psychedelics your government are playing with are powerful, to be sure, but WE do not need tricks, Captain.” Hynek chuckles. “We can manipulate atoms and preform magic, LSD is insignificant. But if you would like some, by all means.”

Hynek held out his hand, there’s a tiny glass vial on his palm, like what vaccines came in, but much smaller. The liquid inside is clear. Quinn picked it up.

It felt real, just like everything else felt real.  
He shook it, could feel the liquid slosh and could faintly hear it.

“Maybe later,” Quinn dropped the vial in his pocket. “I‘d love a smoke though, if it isn’t too much trouble.”

“Of course, tobacco or marijuana?” Hynek asked and despite himself, Quinn laughs.

“I haven’t smoked weed since the war.” Quinn said looking at Hynek as he held up two hand rolled cigarettes and a box of matches with the logo from a bar Quinn had indeed spent time in over in France.

The first drag hits him like a truck.

Quinn coughs, and hard, the cigarette is mixed more heavily with weed than tobacco, but he keeps smoking. By the fourth drag, he is pleasantly loose-limbed and hazy. He exhales the fifth drag slowly and looks over at the being pretending to be Hynek.

“What do you see, Captain?” Hynek raises one of the drawings.

“Ships,” Quinn said, the longer he stared at the smudge graphite and the more he smokes, the clearer the images become. The C.I.A. aircraft hanger had held horribly designed replicas of REAL craft. These UFO’s were massive, more like aircraft carriers than fighter planes, though there are plenty of them too.

A second picture is put in front of him. 

“And what do you see here?” Hynek’s voice is distant.

Michael takes a long, slow drag of his tobacco laced joint.

“Beings…” He says, very quietly, afraid to say it too loud, to acknowledge it, in this dream? “ _ **Aliens**_.” He’s crying, as the graphite smudges become humanoid beings.

There are the tiny ones, like the hoaxed Roswell autopsy film; they have grey skin and huge solid black eyes that took up the majority of their egg-shaped heads. Then, there are bipedal lizards, they look like humans and velociraptors had bred; they had long spiked tails, clawed hands with three fingers and their feet had large dew claws and their mouths opened wider than a human’s ever could and were full of sharp, pointed teeth.

The third species looked relatively human, but were most notably very, very tall. They have golden skin, as if they were actually made of metal, but still had a living quality to their flesh. Solid, glowing blue eyes, three of them placed on the face like a Hindu God. Four arms too, though the second set were thinner, with six fingers instead of five on the main set of hands; all of which are more dexterous than even the most skilled pianist. They only have two legs, but they are thickly muscled with large, wide feet. 

Quinn has to look away from the drawings.   
Main Street, Fargo looks as normal as ever. There’s a group of young kids in Halloween costumes running down the sidewalk. A boy dressed like an astronaut at the very front of the pack, catches the Captain’s attention, and his brow furrows.

He looks back at Hynek and snuffed out his joint. “I saw all this, at the bottom of the ocean?” He asked, gesturing down to the drawings, which now, instead of the smudged, vague graphite shapes, are extremely detailed and in vivid color almost to realistic to be drawings, but Quinn’s hands are stained with the evidence. 

“Technically,” Hynek begins, reaching for his coffee now that his ice cream is gone. “You saw an interdimensional wormhole, which you were then thrown through when your Navy decided to try and blow it up. Unsuccessfully, I might add.”

“Okay,” Michael said slowly, leaning back in his seat. He reaches for his coffee, and takes a long, slow drink. “Then what?”

“We recovered you from the crash, it was the perfect opportunity to acquire you without raising suspicions and without an, well there’s not really anything humans could do, but We do try to leave the less advanced civilizations undisturbed.” Hynek said clearly amused as he explained. “Your watercraft was terribly damaged in the explosion and crash, not to mention the stresses of interdimensional travels. To be blunt, Captain, you were lucky We were following you.”

Quinn can remember now. 

The three, blue -white, swirling vortexes and the massive, strange metal scaffolding constructions around them, and the crafts going in and out in lightning speeds, but a clearly organized pattern. Some of the crafts circled around and zoomed past Quinn’s submarine, out into the ocean, more than likely the USO’s that were being reported during the training exercise. However, it was clear, that this seemed to just be some sort of waystation for most of the UFO’s, which taxied from one portal to another.

Then, the explosions. He remembers the sub being thrown into one of the swirling masses, and then crashing through a jungle canopy, and the sub getting caught up in massive vines, just before hitting the ground. Quinn had gotten out, his right leg was… a mangled mess and he vomited blood as he leant against a strange, purple bush.

Quinn shook his head; he didn’t want to think about that… _dying_. He knew he had been dying.

Then, the golden beings, three of them in strange flight suits had come up to him, approached the same way a person approached a wounded animal.

Everything else is a strange blur, until Quinn started to remember the repeated episodes in the diner. “How are you doing this?”

“A computer.” Answered the alien Hynek. “I’m able to plug your brain into it, and my own brain and here we are.” 

“A computer.” Quinn replied, disbelief evident in his tone and the look in his eyes.

“Yes, you’re not panicking over the idea, this is good Captain,” Alien Hynek said. “You’ve physically healed from the accident; we will be removing you from the healing pod soon.”

“Then what is going to happen?” Michael asked, reaching for his coffee. It tasted real, it is hot in his mouth, and he can feel as he swallowed. _‘A computer, I’ll be damned._ ’ He thought with a shake of his head.

“We will finish our experiments.”

* * *

Quinn hit the floor with a wet splat, he’s wearing nothing and the liquid he is covered in is hot, thick and sweet, like warmed honey. 

He pushes himself to his feet shakily, taking in the white metal and blue tinted glass everywhere. Behind him is a thing that isn’t all that different from the tank that had housed Von Braun’s ‘Monkey’, thick metal tubes and thin wires hanging limp as the remains of the lavender liquid drained out the bottom.

“Take it slow, Captain, reorientation is a slow process.” 

The voice was Hynek’s, but not, there was a very heavy accent.

Quinn looked towards the voice, and the air is punched from his lungs.

The golden skinned being with three blue eyes, stood at eleven feet, seven inches tall, wearing a black flight suit. There are strange metal pins along the right arms and shoulder not unlike military metals and patches. He is lifted to his feet by the being, who walks him over to a curved metal chair with no arms and forces him into it with a casual show of strength that leaves the soldier thoroughly humiliated.

The next moment, an articulating robotic arm comes out of the ceiling towards his head, and the alien says in Hynek’s voice: “Do your best to sit still Captain, the device you are going to be implanted with is vital for your continued survival upon this vessel outside of the healing pod.”

He is immediately stabbed behind the left ear multiple times, then feels something clamp along the back of his ear and head the short distance to his hairline, not unlike a very slim hearing aid. Quinn curses for several long minutes, glaring at the alien.

Terrifyingly, his face is enclosed in metal and blue illuminated goggles. A helmet, that somehow came from the tiny piece of metal he had just been implanted with. He raises shaking hands to touch the helmet. It has a relatively flat face, and large round goggles that stick out about a half inch and filter the room’s bright lights. There are sights flickering over the goggle lenses. Quinn takes a deep breath, and feels filtered, cool air filled his lungs. The helmet curves over his jaw and down his neck in a flexible, soft material like foil. His hair sticks out the top, still limp and sticky from whatever liquid he had been suspended in. 

The helmet snaps away in a second, and Quinn barely feels the metal behind his ear move as the impossible helmet folded away.

The alien giant is at Michael’s side again, yanking him out of the chair and further into the ship.

* * *

  
**Five Years Later: Chile, South America**

Quinn walked along the beach, his metal boots left deep prints in the sand as he moved towards the tiny shack with a single lamp on the porch next to two, different sized telescopes. He can hear movement inside, smell coffee freshly brewed. 

The door opened before he could knock, and a coffee mug shattered over his boots.

“Hey doc, you’re never going to believe what I have seen.”

“F-fucking hell, Michael!” Hynek touches his shoulders, shifting his loafers over the broken ceramic between them. It’s an awkward double pat, then a squeeze, then the doctor is clutching at him, pulling Quinn closer and sobbing as he hugs him.

“Easy doc,” Michael wraps his arms tightly, but carefully around the older man, careful of his strength and sighs against the older man’s much greyer hair. He chuckles wetly, as Hynek muttered something against his chest, punches him halfheartedly in the side and breaks down into sobs all over again.

A long time passes in the tiny porch, before Allen is able to pull away, looking like an absolute mess.

“Jesus, Michael.” The man clears his throat, hugs him again then pulls back to stare at him in disbelief. “I thought you were dead! B-but you’re. **HERE**.” Allen laughs though it sounds like he’s still crying as he looks Michael over again, touches his odd leather coat, looks bewildered at the holstered guns under his arms, the clearly mechanical belt around his waist. “You don’t look like you’ve aged a day, Michael.”

Quinn cleared his throat, ducked his head and shifted. “It has been, a very, LONG trip doc, got a drink?”

Allen herds him inside without another word, Quinn drops his bag just inside the door, then goes over to sit in the threadbare armchair with a groan, as Hynek goes over to the small wood table and pulls a bottle of whisky off the corner pressed to the wall, then moves to the tiny kitchen to pull two mismatched glasses from the strainer. 

He turns around and stops dead, arms limp at his sides and eyes wide, crying at the sight of the younger man slouching in his tiny cabin. “Come on doc, pour me a drink so I can tell you where all I have been.” Michael sits up, as Allen crosses the room and sits on the edge of the small bed next to the chair Michael is in. He gives the Captain a glass while studying him. 

“Where **have** you been?”

“Traveling through the galaxy,” Quinn said while reaching to his belt with his free hand.

The metal cylinder he removes has buttons along it. He presses one while Hynek pours their drinks. A flicker later a projected screen hovers in a ten-inch square from the cylinder. It looks like a television screen, Quinn holds it out to Hynek, who almost drops his drink and the bottle in his haste to take the computer from Quinn.

“What is this?” Allen asked, Quinn leans forward to show him how the device works, tapping at the holographic projection to get to the photos he had taken from the cockpit of his new ship of the Solar system as he had reentered it, of Earth from the Moon, the South American continent as he had flown over.

“This is my computer doc, one of many, actually.” Quinn said nonchalantly, leant back and took a sip of his whisky, then sighed, watching as Allen’s curiosity got the better of him and slowly, he took his gaze from Michael to the computer. Allen began flipping through the photos. Ten minutes pass in relative silence, he knows Allen is just trying to absorb the images of planets, stars and **Space** that he had never seen before.

The quality of the camera had been unbelievable when Michael had first seen it too, a _LOT_ of things had been unbelievable when he had first seen them.

He drops the computer with a gasp at the picture of the alien, Wyn-Arron-Et, or that was the closest Quinn had gotten to pronouncing it correctly, to Wyn’s endless amusements.  
Quinn gives him the glass of abandoned whisky with a wiry smile. 

“To the Truth.” The Captain said and Allen took his drink in a daze. 

**Author's Note:**

> Aliens, I want Season 3 and I want ALIENS and Quinn being okay with the fact that we are not alone in the universe. 
> 
> Also, I used Star-Lord as a reference for Quinn's look, the helmet is pretty much 100% rip off from the movies, but the color of the lenses are different. 
> 
> There are some references to some alien abduction cases and other conspiracy theory stuff in this too


End file.
